Vintage

Our last two posts chronicled the attempt to use physical evidence at the house and written records from a variety of sources to pin down the construction date of Larner-Jones House. When we started the process, we had no reason to doubt the supposed 1852 construction date. However, by the time we got through most of the written records we could dig up, 1852 was looking less likely to be the answer.

Ultimately, we came upon four sources of written records that, together, allowed us to come up with the best estimate we have so far. Those four sources of information are the 1970 research of past owners, two maps of Falls Church created by the Federal Government in separate years, and painstaking research by Falls Church historian and author Shirley Camp documented in her book "Past Times Around Falls Church".

Two of the sources establish with near certainty that in 1878, Landin Aldrich occupied Larner-Jones House. The first of our map sources, an 1878 Library of Congress Map, shows a house and a lot clearly labeled "Landin Aldrich" at the corner of what is now Maple and Columbia streets.

Entered According to Act of Congress in the year 1878 by G.M. Hopkins, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress

This close-up zoom of the map (at right) shows the Landin Aldrich property, bounded on both sides by Wells Forbes and to the north by Isaac Crossman's land. Note the "Crossman Chapel" at the corner of Columbia and Fairfax-Georgetown Parkway, now called Lee Highway. The chapel there still stands under the name of "Christ Crossman United Methodist Church". The map also shows the home of Dr. JB Gardner at the intersection of Columbia and Falls Road (now Little Falls Street). This property is once again known as Shadow Lawn, and still stands at the same address.

This map dovetails with the 1970 records research, stating that one of the prior owners was Landin Aldrich. One interesting contradiction in the land records is that the transfer of the property to Landin Aldrich apparently did not take place until 1880, despite obviously being associated with him in this 1878 map. These two data points establish a date by which the house was certainly already constructed - 1878.

The third, and more elusive, data point we discovered was a map made in 1862 by the Bureau of Topographic Engineers, drawn primarily for the purpose of showing the lines of defense around Washington during the Civil War. In the upper right of the image, a small version of the entire map is shown, with the small red rectangle representing the section of the map image below. Noting the details on the extremely zoomed-in version of this map, one gets the sense of the massive effort that must have been undertaken to cover such a wide swath of the Washington area.

It's not what you see, it's what you don't see.

What is notably missing from this map is Larner-Jones House. Falls Road (now Little Falls Street), Great Falls Street and the Middle Turnpike (now Broad Street and Leesburg Pike) are clearly shown. The dotted lines represent a private road that the Osborns built from their house to the far side of the Toll Gate, conveniently allowing them to get produce to market without paying a toll. If Larner-Jones House existed in 1862, it was stealthily hidden somewhere in Cyrus Osborn's orchard.

Taylor's Tavern, c. 1861-1869

Incidentally, the "Fort" on the right side of the image above is Fort Buffalo, known today to everyone in Northern Virginia as Seven Corners. The small defense line labeled "408" above it is near Taylor's Hill and Taylor's Tavern (at right), a Union outpost during the Civil War. Leesburg Pike today has been renamed from "Middle Turnpike", and the Toll Gate represented on this 1862 map is the history behind the name given to Tollgate Way, a townhouse community on today's Broad Street near that location.

This map pretty conclusively shows that LJH was not built yet in 1862, and is likely to be the source used in the 1996 and 2005 official Falls Church documentation on historic structures. Based on these sources, the description in the 1996 survey of "between 1862 and 1878" is the most accurate we have found so far. However, we can do a little better.

The last source we used to refine our dates was the 1981 Shirley Camp book "Past Times Around Falls Church", covering the evolution of the Falls Church area from 1729-1875. In addition to a detailed history on Cherry Hill Farm, the book covers the disposition of land in Falls Church from the original Trammell Patent. It was the last piece of information we needed.

The following excerpts from the book provided the last pieces to the puzzle, since Shirley Camp went to the trouble of deciphering the written conveyances, locating them on the 1878 map, and then also reviewing tax records for personal property. We can trace the house from the 1862 map showing the Osborn ownership of the land:

John Mills Purchases the Land in 1833

Mills to Newton to Harvey in 1844

Harvey to Newton to Osborn in 1846

The Osborns Sell After 19 Years on the Farm

The paragraph above describes the property on which Larner-Jones House now sits. The description matches the 1878 map nicely, with the property bordering Williston Clover's Farm and the 1 acre lot sold to William Kingsley. The book goes on to describe James Sargent's time in Falls Church through the lens of his personal property taxes from 1873:

The Trace is Complete

It is very likely that the property remained farmland until at least 1873 when Isaac Crossman began selling off chunks of Cyrus Osborn's farm that he acquired in 1865. Only two houses (other than Kingsley's) show up on this piece of land by 1878, and the 1877 survey of Landin Aldrich's property was mentioned in the 1970 research we also possess.

The paragraph describing assessments for the Sargent tract in 1874-1875 is interesting because the property carries neither his name nor Buxton's, to whom the property was presumably mortgaged. The property is clearly occupied by Landin Aldrich in 1877-1878, but according to deed it was owned by Wells Forbes from 1875-1880.

Taking all of this information into account, we are fairly certain that Larner-Jones House was built between 1873 and 1875, and occupied by Landin Aldrich until he bought and sold the property 5 days apart in 1880. From there, the chain of ownership is easily followed by the 1970 research, and it paints a picture of interesting owners for another post.